Bonding, page 3
‘And you?’ I asked him.
‘No,’ his voice was steady, ‘I’m here to see some friends.’
He told me that they had a villa in the hills. He was going to stay with them that night, once they’d arrived on the island.
‘They’re closing this place down,’ he said, ‘because of the fire. We’re all being evacuated. They’ll probably send you to the coast.’
I wanted to talk to him some more but I couldn’t, my mind had gone completely blank.
•
Later, I saw him standing in the car park as we were ushered to our new lodgings. He nodded at me and I rolled my window down.
‘I’m Tom, by the way,’ he said, moving to shake my hand and then thinking better of it.
I considered offering him a lift but then spotted a taxi pulling up behind him.
‘What are you doing this week?’ he asked. ‘I mean, it seems a shame us all being kicked out like this. You know, if you wanted, you could come up to the house.’
4
It looked like an old farmhouse. Lamps were hanging from the palm trees, illuminating a gravelled driveway. I could feel the haze of a watering system pulsing somewhere on the lawn. It took a while for the door to open.
Tom looked at me with curiosity.
‘You came,’ he said, a little surprised.
Inside, the place smelt like eucalyptus. He led me down a long corridor towards a large arched lounge. Beyond this, I could hear voices. The next door opened onto a chamber dimly lit by a heavy, cast-iron chandelier studded with thick white candles. The room was filled with books, blob-shaped sofas, a marble coffee table, a scattering of plants and a tall metal sculpture on which someone had hung a bikini. I realized that I didn’t know what I was doing there. I felt ashamed of my blatant availability as I followed him out onto a poolside terrace where a group of people were sitting around a table, their faces partially illuminated by a row of tiny, flickering candles. It looked as if they’d just finished a meal, there were bowls of salad strewn across the table and a plate of large roasted artichokes. A man in a creased blue shirt stood up. ‘This is Niall,’ Tom said, matter-of-fact, as his friend leaned over to shake my hand.
Niall’s grip was firm and businesslike. His face was scattered with freckles, his skin dry from alcohol and sun. Sitting behind him were three women. ‘My wife, Grace,’ Niall informed me, ‘and this is Bay and Mireille.’ Grace stood up to kiss my cheek while the other two nodded politely. Grace was bird-like and serious, her grey eyes set into a narrow face, her hair chopped short around her jaw.
‘Good to meet you,’ she said, looking slightly bemused. She obviously had no idea why I was there. ‘You look like you need a drink.’ She examined my face with curiosity, as if she was inspecting an unusual animal. ‘You’re so pale, look at you. Have you only just arrived?’
‘A few days ago,’ I said.
She insisted I sat down beside her, squeezing me up against Mireille to the point that I could smell the cigarette smoke on her breath. Mireille was in a short green dress, her round lips painted with a soft metallic gloss. Around her neck was a moulded choker that curved down towards her collarbone. Bay looked softer than the others, her white-blonde hair piled loosely on her head. Her dress was stretched over a bikini that was still damp from the pool. At the end of the garden, a silver greyhound paced around the edge of the water. ‘Winston! Come back here,’ Bay called, patting her legs. ‘Come on,’ she shouted. The dog turned to burrow in the bushes. ‘He never listens to me,’ she swivelled back.
‘He needs his space,’ Grace said. ‘So, how do you know Tom?’ she flashed me with the full force of her attention. I was reluctant to tell her that I didn’t, so I changed the subject to the fire.
‘Isn’t it crazy?’ Mireille cut in, her English accented with French. ‘They never used to happen here so often. It’s the climate. The heat’s so strong these days.’
‘Thirty-seven degrees last night. It isn’t normal.’ Bay turned back to the dog but he seemed to have vanished into the darkness.
‘I heard about the evacuation,’ Niall said. He lit a cigarette. ‘Fucking crazy. Did they move you to the bay?’
‘Just above the strip,’ I told him. ‘It’s a place called Hotel Playasol.’
‘Oof.’
‘Bad luck.’ Bay shook her head.
‘It’s not the nicest part of the island.’ Grace passed me a glass of wine. ‘Last time I was down there, there was blood spattered on the beach.’
‘What’s all that about?’ Mireille asked. ‘The Brits abroad, it’s so funny.’
‘It’s because of how we work,’ Niall replied. ‘Long hours. Soul-sucking jobs. The pay’s shit, the weather’s shit. Give us a taste of freedom and we lose our fucking minds.’
Grace gave him a sceptical look.
‘I mean, I work in tech,’ he said vaguely. ‘It’s different for me, but you know what I mean.’
She shook her head almost imperceptibly.
‘I don’t know.’ Bay was picking the leaves off a small piece of artichoke. She held one of them out in the air in an effort to lure the dog towards her. ‘I think it’s more than that. We’ve always had that propensity for chaos, haven’t we? I know I have.’
‘You mean booze?’ Niall asked her.
‘Yeah, haven’t we always had that reputation?’
‘I don’t know about that.’ Niall drained his glass and reached into the pocket of his jeans. He produced a piece of waxed paper that had been folded into a small square. ‘Although I think you’re right, it’s more than just work. I mean, in thirty years’ – he waved his hand in the direction of the bay – ‘most of the people staying on that strip won’t be here. They’re already being priced off the island. In a few decades, they’ll be gone. If they’re lucky, their kids will still have jobs, but those jobs will be less stable. There will be more screen time, lower pay. Or maybe the government will pay them not to work. Suppose that happens? Take work out of the picture completely. Are they going to stop getting their rocks off? I sincerely doubt it.’
‘I don’t know.’ Tom was sitting across from me, his face shaded by the candles. ‘People might medicate themselves but it won’t necessarily be for the fun of it. You can’t just have fun all the time.’
Mireille leaned back and drained her glass. ‘I can. I mean, what else is there?’ I noticed that her bare foot was pressed against the inside of Niall’s thigh.
‘Live a little?’ Niall suggested. ‘Talk to each other? Look after each other? Fuck, I imagine.’
‘I know something about this,’ I said. ‘I had to study it at college. They wanted to see what people did with their free time when their working hours were cut. Like in America – the rust belt, those kinds of places. No jobs. A lot of people subsidized for not doing much.’
‘And?’ Bay asked, the leaves of the artichoke browning slowly on the table in front of her.
‘They spent it on the internet, mostly. Playing games. Watching porn.’
‘Of course they did. Who wouldn’t?’ Mireille finished her cigarette and stubbed it out. ‘I’d probably watch porn all day if I could.’
‘I couldn’t live like that,’ Grace said as the dog approached her, sniffing around her legs. ‘No way. You need some structure in your life.’
‘Well, they did feel bad,’ I said. ‘That’s exactly how they felt, although a lot of them couldn’t stop, they just became steadily more addicted. There was substance abuse as well – opioids. Tranquillizers.’
‘And on that note,’ Niall said brightly, smoothing the waxed paper out in front of him. ‘Here we have Tom’s finest efforts. He’s really outdone himself this time.’
He cut the soft white powder with his card, scraping a pile onto a copy of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. ‘Brought to you by Britain’s finest.’
Tom caught my eye in embarrassment.
‘I just check it’s pure,’ he explained. ‘I used to be a chemist.’ He leaned towards me and said ‘You don’t have to’ under his breath. ‘They like it.’ He gestured at the others, as if by way of apology.
‘Come on now, you can’t miss this.’ Niall sculpted the powder into lines. ‘The world’s going to shit, remember? The least we can do is go down in style.’
I looked at Tom but he didn’t catch my eye.
‘Let’s see what we’ve got here then.’ Mireille leaned over the table, Niall catching her dress riding up her thighs.
‘Easy, cowgirl.’ For a second, I thought he was going to slap her arse.
‘Ignore him, he’s always like this.’ Bay shook her head, taking my arm.
‘Be nice.’ Grace sounded almost maternal. She crossed over to Niall’s chair, where she perched on the edge of his knee. She took his cigarette and passed it to Bay, who sucked deeply, then put it out. ‘I think you’ve had enough of those,’ she said, giving him a territorial pat.
•
An hour passed before I started to feel it. I was standing by the pool, music drifting from the house. Bay’s skin was cool against mine, her lips moving close to my ear. I could understand what she was saying but I wasn’t present, I was somewhere else, riding on a strange wave of joy. What followed was a bolt of pure euphoria. It shot through me, pounding through my veins. I waited for the feeling to subside, but instead it held me, radiating outwards. My internal world and external reality oscillated in harmony, opening up to encompass Bay as her touch rippled down my spine.
At one point, Niall drove us through the hills. We parked outside a white building and walked through its large, dimly lit interior. Beyond was a private beach on which a crowd of people danced. There were strings of lanterns above their heads, the music heavy and hypnotic. These people weren’t dancing with each other, they were all facing the front, their shoulders jostling as they swayed to a solitary speaker in the sand. Time passed slowly but it was good. I was aware I was high but I felt well. The music rose and my mood lifted further. I looked at Tom in total adoration. He looked back with what seemed to be mild concern. He put an arm around me and I closed my eyes, turning towards him.
•
I woke up hot, in bright daylight, on the synthetic sheets of the Hotel Playasol. It took me a while to take in my surroundings. I opened the door to the balcony and stepped outside. On the Passeig de la Mar below, the holidaymakers were out in force. Most were wearing brightly coloured sportswear, their children dressed in smaller versions of the same. The plastic bunting on the beach stalls criss-crossed a sea of human bodies.
I leaned further over the railing and watched the heads passing underneath me. I was reminded of Monkey Planet, a show I’d once seen about long-tailed macaques – how increasing group size led to more violent competition as the monkeys tried to distinguish themselves.
‘Please don’t jump.’
Tom was awake. He sat up and rubbed his face, his eyes soft and bleary with sleep. He was naked apart from a pair of cotton boxers. He was physically tougher than I’d imagined. His dark hair was a little dishevelled, his face creased from the pillow. Without his glasses, his eyes looked green-grey in the morning light. I wanted to move back beside him but I resisted.
‘Sorry about last night,’ he said.
‘Why?’
He looked at me quizzically. ‘I think you probably had too much.’
I couldn’t remember anything beyond the party. All I knew was that I’d felt good, better than I’d done in years.
‘You don’t say much, do you?’ He got up and joined me on the balcony. He didn’t touch me when he reached the railings. I could hardly bring myself to look at him.
‘How long are you around for?’ he asked.
When I told him I had a few more days, he took a while to think about it.
‘You should come out on the boat some time,’ he said as he searched for Wi-Fi on his phone.
I couldn’t tell if he was serious; he seemed more interested in booking a taxi.
I looked over the balcony again. It was flaming hot outside. Underneath us, a tired-looking beach seller was laying out his box of bags.
•
That night, alone in the room, I found an old copy of Ibiza Living. The shower was broken so I ran a bath and opened the magazine at random. A photo of a woman dancing in the sunset was accompanied by an article about the island: ‘a vibrant melting pot of hipsters, celebrities and renegade bohemians’, but also of ‘business professionals and thought leaders looking to improve their health and fitness in discreet and scenic settings’.
The next page featured an interview with a greying fifty-something in headphones. According to this Ibiza veteran, the island was working hard to stop attracting ‘the wrong sorts’, which was why the clubs had had to raise their prices. In fact, its reputation was undergoing a luxurious transformation. Only five-star resorts were now being opened. He assured us that the Seven Pines in Cala Conta was one of the jewels in the crown of this new plan. This place offered guests a personal pool, an ice grotto and a Pershing yacht.
I sat in the bath and watched the progress of a small insect on the wall. Outside, voices could be heard clamouring over the music from the bars. The bathroom was dank and claustrophobic, it smelt of other people’s sweat. Stuffed down the side of the bath was a waterlogged copy of Fifty Shades of Grey – a German edition, its pages brown and glued together. I tried not to imagine the previous occupant of my apartment, an older Fraulein no doubt, probably masturbating furiously to the thrill of being taken by a billionaire ‘industrialist’. Although, if I was honest, I couldn’t deny the sentiment. There was a reason books like this were all the same.
My phone buzzed loudly by my head, a message from someone I hadn’t seen in years. I almost dropped it in the bath.
It’s Lara. I heard you need a job.
5
The boat was already running by the time I arrived at the Marina at Port Esportiu. It was Niall’s boat, a 32-foot cutter, smaller than most of the yachts in the harbour. I followed Tom on board and sat at one of the white upholstered booths on deck as Niall reeled up the anchor. Once we’d started to pick up speed, the bow glided through the water like a knife. At a certain distance from the shore, the ordinary world seemed to lose all meaning. The tourists on the beach looked ant-like, packed together like mould on a crust. I looked up Formentera on my phone. According to Lonely Planet, the island we were heading towards was ‘blissfully languid’ and ‘full of barefoot-glam boutiques’. Wikipedia took a more cultured approach: a paragraph on Bob Dylan, another on the island’s violent past, passing from the Carthaginians to the Romans, then to the Visigoths, the Vandals and the Arabs before it was finally seized by the Catalans and absorbed into the Crown of Aragon. Bursts of spray bounced off my face as we approached a rough, volcanic shore. I’d seen photos of these jagged rocks before, probably on an advert for something, but the reality was stranger, they looked eerie, jutting out like a half-exposed ruin.
As I sat, scanning the horizon, my phone jumped suddenly to life. It was a new message from the same conversation.
I know it’s been a while.
Can I give you a call?
•
It was almost noon by the time we moored at Playa Es Calo. The beach there was divided into two. On one side, paunchy couples sat beneath a grid of acid green umbrellas, their children running back and forth across the sand that divided the seating area from the urine-soaked shallows of the ocean. For the most part, these couples seemed affectionate in a bovine sort of way. Others were more hostile, their backs turned, their devices drawing them into private worlds. The men lay sideways on their flanks, bellies spilling onto their towels. The women were mostly in bikinis, their shoulder straps tied behind their backs, their breasts resting loosely on their stomachs.
The other side of the beach was another story: gym-toned women, many of them topless, wandering around the beach bars, while tattooed men in vests and shorts watched them hawk-like from the sidelines. In one of the bars, a DJ was playing a gentle, almost jazz-like set. Girls were bobbing to the music, their contoured stomachs lubed with cream. No one caught anyone’s eye and yet the atmosphere was charged. They all ignored the families in the distance, as if oblivious to where all of this was heading.
Bay rolled her towel out next to mine, removed her top immediately and started slathering sunscreen on her chest. I couldn’t see her eyes behind her glasses, all I could see were two reflections of myself. She pulled a book out of her bag and caught me glancing at what she was reading: Human Givens: A New Approach to Emotional Health and Clear Thinking. On the cover was a photo of the rainforest, dew dripping from a verdant frond.
‘You should read it,’ she told me. ‘It’s really changed the way I think. It’s all about basic needs, you know, the things we all need to be happy.’
‘Like?’ I asked her.
‘Well, it starts with absolute fundamentals – food, shelter, things like that. Not just bricks and mortar but like, emotionally, a home.’
‘What else?’
‘Oh, I mean, it just goes on.’ She sighed, flicking through the pages.
I tried to ignore the boys beside us who were staring at her tits.
‘There’s attention, for example – like being acknowledged by the world. Then there’s a sense of control over your life. After that comes love, intimacy, feeling like part of a community. There are tons of things.’ She propped herself up on one elbow and slid a thin cigarette out of her bag. I looked at her mirrored lenses and wondered what she thought of me. She obviously had money, and either hadn’t noticed or was relaxed about the fact that I didn’t. ‘Freedom’s a big one.’ She exhaled, an ‘O’ of smoke floating towards the sea. ‘Personal autonomy, that sort of thing.’
It struck me that these things were hard to come by – even taken in isolation, I couldn’t say I’d managed even one of them.
‘The point at which life is worth living is probably quite high,’ I said out loud.
She looked surprised but she didn’t contradict me. I didn’t smoke but I took a cigarette, although it wasn’t really a cigarette I wanted – it was more of whatever I’d had the other night.
‘No,’ his voice was steady, ‘I’m here to see some friends.’
He told me that they had a villa in the hills. He was going to stay with them that night, once they’d arrived on the island.
‘They’re closing this place down,’ he said, ‘because of the fire. We’re all being evacuated. They’ll probably send you to the coast.’
I wanted to talk to him some more but I couldn’t, my mind had gone completely blank.
•
Later, I saw him standing in the car park as we were ushered to our new lodgings. He nodded at me and I rolled my window down.
‘I’m Tom, by the way,’ he said, moving to shake my hand and then thinking better of it.
I considered offering him a lift but then spotted a taxi pulling up behind him.
‘What are you doing this week?’ he asked. ‘I mean, it seems a shame us all being kicked out like this. You know, if you wanted, you could come up to the house.’
4
It looked like an old farmhouse. Lamps were hanging from the palm trees, illuminating a gravelled driveway. I could feel the haze of a watering system pulsing somewhere on the lawn. It took a while for the door to open.
Tom looked at me with curiosity.
‘You came,’ he said, a little surprised.
Inside, the place smelt like eucalyptus. He led me down a long corridor towards a large arched lounge. Beyond this, I could hear voices. The next door opened onto a chamber dimly lit by a heavy, cast-iron chandelier studded with thick white candles. The room was filled with books, blob-shaped sofas, a marble coffee table, a scattering of plants and a tall metal sculpture on which someone had hung a bikini. I realized that I didn’t know what I was doing there. I felt ashamed of my blatant availability as I followed him out onto a poolside terrace where a group of people were sitting around a table, their faces partially illuminated by a row of tiny, flickering candles. It looked as if they’d just finished a meal, there were bowls of salad strewn across the table and a plate of large roasted artichokes. A man in a creased blue shirt stood up. ‘This is Niall,’ Tom said, matter-of-fact, as his friend leaned over to shake my hand.
Niall’s grip was firm and businesslike. His face was scattered with freckles, his skin dry from alcohol and sun. Sitting behind him were three women. ‘My wife, Grace,’ Niall informed me, ‘and this is Bay and Mireille.’ Grace stood up to kiss my cheek while the other two nodded politely. Grace was bird-like and serious, her grey eyes set into a narrow face, her hair chopped short around her jaw.
‘Good to meet you,’ she said, looking slightly bemused. She obviously had no idea why I was there. ‘You look like you need a drink.’ She examined my face with curiosity, as if she was inspecting an unusual animal. ‘You’re so pale, look at you. Have you only just arrived?’
‘A few days ago,’ I said.
She insisted I sat down beside her, squeezing me up against Mireille to the point that I could smell the cigarette smoke on her breath. Mireille was in a short green dress, her round lips painted with a soft metallic gloss. Around her neck was a moulded choker that curved down towards her collarbone. Bay looked softer than the others, her white-blonde hair piled loosely on her head. Her dress was stretched over a bikini that was still damp from the pool. At the end of the garden, a silver greyhound paced around the edge of the water. ‘Winston! Come back here,’ Bay called, patting her legs. ‘Come on,’ she shouted. The dog turned to burrow in the bushes. ‘He never listens to me,’ she swivelled back.
‘He needs his space,’ Grace said. ‘So, how do you know Tom?’ she flashed me with the full force of her attention. I was reluctant to tell her that I didn’t, so I changed the subject to the fire.
‘Isn’t it crazy?’ Mireille cut in, her English accented with French. ‘They never used to happen here so often. It’s the climate. The heat’s so strong these days.’
‘Thirty-seven degrees last night. It isn’t normal.’ Bay turned back to the dog but he seemed to have vanished into the darkness.
‘I heard about the evacuation,’ Niall said. He lit a cigarette. ‘Fucking crazy. Did they move you to the bay?’
‘Just above the strip,’ I told him. ‘It’s a place called Hotel Playasol.’
‘Oof.’
‘Bad luck.’ Bay shook her head.
‘It’s not the nicest part of the island.’ Grace passed me a glass of wine. ‘Last time I was down there, there was blood spattered on the beach.’
‘What’s all that about?’ Mireille asked. ‘The Brits abroad, it’s so funny.’
‘It’s because of how we work,’ Niall replied. ‘Long hours. Soul-sucking jobs. The pay’s shit, the weather’s shit. Give us a taste of freedom and we lose our fucking minds.’
Grace gave him a sceptical look.
‘I mean, I work in tech,’ he said vaguely. ‘It’s different for me, but you know what I mean.’
She shook her head almost imperceptibly.
‘I don’t know.’ Bay was picking the leaves off a small piece of artichoke. She held one of them out in the air in an effort to lure the dog towards her. ‘I think it’s more than that. We’ve always had that propensity for chaos, haven’t we? I know I have.’
‘You mean booze?’ Niall asked her.
‘Yeah, haven’t we always had that reputation?’
‘I don’t know about that.’ Niall drained his glass and reached into the pocket of his jeans. He produced a piece of waxed paper that had been folded into a small square. ‘Although I think you’re right, it’s more than just work. I mean, in thirty years’ – he waved his hand in the direction of the bay – ‘most of the people staying on that strip won’t be here. They’re already being priced off the island. In a few decades, they’ll be gone. If they’re lucky, their kids will still have jobs, but those jobs will be less stable. There will be more screen time, lower pay. Or maybe the government will pay them not to work. Suppose that happens? Take work out of the picture completely. Are they going to stop getting their rocks off? I sincerely doubt it.’
‘I don’t know.’ Tom was sitting across from me, his face shaded by the candles. ‘People might medicate themselves but it won’t necessarily be for the fun of it. You can’t just have fun all the time.’
Mireille leaned back and drained her glass. ‘I can. I mean, what else is there?’ I noticed that her bare foot was pressed against the inside of Niall’s thigh.
‘Live a little?’ Niall suggested. ‘Talk to each other? Look after each other? Fuck, I imagine.’
‘I know something about this,’ I said. ‘I had to study it at college. They wanted to see what people did with their free time when their working hours were cut. Like in America – the rust belt, those kinds of places. No jobs. A lot of people subsidized for not doing much.’
‘And?’ Bay asked, the leaves of the artichoke browning slowly on the table in front of her.
‘They spent it on the internet, mostly. Playing games. Watching porn.’
‘Of course they did. Who wouldn’t?’ Mireille finished her cigarette and stubbed it out. ‘I’d probably watch porn all day if I could.’
‘I couldn’t live like that,’ Grace said as the dog approached her, sniffing around her legs. ‘No way. You need some structure in your life.’
‘Well, they did feel bad,’ I said. ‘That’s exactly how they felt, although a lot of them couldn’t stop, they just became steadily more addicted. There was substance abuse as well – opioids. Tranquillizers.’
‘And on that note,’ Niall said brightly, smoothing the waxed paper out in front of him. ‘Here we have Tom’s finest efforts. He’s really outdone himself this time.’
He cut the soft white powder with his card, scraping a pile onto a copy of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. ‘Brought to you by Britain’s finest.’
Tom caught my eye in embarrassment.
‘I just check it’s pure,’ he explained. ‘I used to be a chemist.’ He leaned towards me and said ‘You don’t have to’ under his breath. ‘They like it.’ He gestured at the others, as if by way of apology.
‘Come on now, you can’t miss this.’ Niall sculpted the powder into lines. ‘The world’s going to shit, remember? The least we can do is go down in style.’
I looked at Tom but he didn’t catch my eye.
‘Let’s see what we’ve got here then.’ Mireille leaned over the table, Niall catching her dress riding up her thighs.
‘Easy, cowgirl.’ For a second, I thought he was going to slap her arse.
‘Ignore him, he’s always like this.’ Bay shook her head, taking my arm.
‘Be nice.’ Grace sounded almost maternal. She crossed over to Niall’s chair, where she perched on the edge of his knee. She took his cigarette and passed it to Bay, who sucked deeply, then put it out. ‘I think you’ve had enough of those,’ she said, giving him a territorial pat.
•
An hour passed before I started to feel it. I was standing by the pool, music drifting from the house. Bay’s skin was cool against mine, her lips moving close to my ear. I could understand what she was saying but I wasn’t present, I was somewhere else, riding on a strange wave of joy. What followed was a bolt of pure euphoria. It shot through me, pounding through my veins. I waited for the feeling to subside, but instead it held me, radiating outwards. My internal world and external reality oscillated in harmony, opening up to encompass Bay as her touch rippled down my spine.
At one point, Niall drove us through the hills. We parked outside a white building and walked through its large, dimly lit interior. Beyond was a private beach on which a crowd of people danced. There were strings of lanterns above their heads, the music heavy and hypnotic. These people weren’t dancing with each other, they were all facing the front, their shoulders jostling as they swayed to a solitary speaker in the sand. Time passed slowly but it was good. I was aware I was high but I felt well. The music rose and my mood lifted further. I looked at Tom in total adoration. He looked back with what seemed to be mild concern. He put an arm around me and I closed my eyes, turning towards him.
•
I woke up hot, in bright daylight, on the synthetic sheets of the Hotel Playasol. It took me a while to take in my surroundings. I opened the door to the balcony and stepped outside. On the Passeig de la Mar below, the holidaymakers were out in force. Most were wearing brightly coloured sportswear, their children dressed in smaller versions of the same. The plastic bunting on the beach stalls criss-crossed a sea of human bodies.
I leaned further over the railing and watched the heads passing underneath me. I was reminded of Monkey Planet, a show I’d once seen about long-tailed macaques – how increasing group size led to more violent competition as the monkeys tried to distinguish themselves.
‘Please don’t jump.’
Tom was awake. He sat up and rubbed his face, his eyes soft and bleary with sleep. He was naked apart from a pair of cotton boxers. He was physically tougher than I’d imagined. His dark hair was a little dishevelled, his face creased from the pillow. Without his glasses, his eyes looked green-grey in the morning light. I wanted to move back beside him but I resisted.
‘Sorry about last night,’ he said.
‘Why?’
He looked at me quizzically. ‘I think you probably had too much.’
I couldn’t remember anything beyond the party. All I knew was that I’d felt good, better than I’d done in years.
‘You don’t say much, do you?’ He got up and joined me on the balcony. He didn’t touch me when he reached the railings. I could hardly bring myself to look at him.
‘How long are you around for?’ he asked.
When I told him I had a few more days, he took a while to think about it.
‘You should come out on the boat some time,’ he said as he searched for Wi-Fi on his phone.
I couldn’t tell if he was serious; he seemed more interested in booking a taxi.
I looked over the balcony again. It was flaming hot outside. Underneath us, a tired-looking beach seller was laying out his box of bags.
•
That night, alone in the room, I found an old copy of Ibiza Living. The shower was broken so I ran a bath and opened the magazine at random. A photo of a woman dancing in the sunset was accompanied by an article about the island: ‘a vibrant melting pot of hipsters, celebrities and renegade bohemians’, but also of ‘business professionals and thought leaders looking to improve their health and fitness in discreet and scenic settings’.
The next page featured an interview with a greying fifty-something in headphones. According to this Ibiza veteran, the island was working hard to stop attracting ‘the wrong sorts’, which was why the clubs had had to raise their prices. In fact, its reputation was undergoing a luxurious transformation. Only five-star resorts were now being opened. He assured us that the Seven Pines in Cala Conta was one of the jewels in the crown of this new plan. This place offered guests a personal pool, an ice grotto and a Pershing yacht.
I sat in the bath and watched the progress of a small insect on the wall. Outside, voices could be heard clamouring over the music from the bars. The bathroom was dank and claustrophobic, it smelt of other people’s sweat. Stuffed down the side of the bath was a waterlogged copy of Fifty Shades of Grey – a German edition, its pages brown and glued together. I tried not to imagine the previous occupant of my apartment, an older Fraulein no doubt, probably masturbating furiously to the thrill of being taken by a billionaire ‘industrialist’. Although, if I was honest, I couldn’t deny the sentiment. There was a reason books like this were all the same.
My phone buzzed loudly by my head, a message from someone I hadn’t seen in years. I almost dropped it in the bath.
It’s Lara. I heard you need a job.
5
The boat was already running by the time I arrived at the Marina at Port Esportiu. It was Niall’s boat, a 32-foot cutter, smaller than most of the yachts in the harbour. I followed Tom on board and sat at one of the white upholstered booths on deck as Niall reeled up the anchor. Once we’d started to pick up speed, the bow glided through the water like a knife. At a certain distance from the shore, the ordinary world seemed to lose all meaning. The tourists on the beach looked ant-like, packed together like mould on a crust. I looked up Formentera on my phone. According to Lonely Planet, the island we were heading towards was ‘blissfully languid’ and ‘full of barefoot-glam boutiques’. Wikipedia took a more cultured approach: a paragraph on Bob Dylan, another on the island’s violent past, passing from the Carthaginians to the Romans, then to the Visigoths, the Vandals and the Arabs before it was finally seized by the Catalans and absorbed into the Crown of Aragon. Bursts of spray bounced off my face as we approached a rough, volcanic shore. I’d seen photos of these jagged rocks before, probably on an advert for something, but the reality was stranger, they looked eerie, jutting out like a half-exposed ruin.
As I sat, scanning the horizon, my phone jumped suddenly to life. It was a new message from the same conversation.
I know it’s been a while.
Can I give you a call?
•
It was almost noon by the time we moored at Playa Es Calo. The beach there was divided into two. On one side, paunchy couples sat beneath a grid of acid green umbrellas, their children running back and forth across the sand that divided the seating area from the urine-soaked shallows of the ocean. For the most part, these couples seemed affectionate in a bovine sort of way. Others were more hostile, their backs turned, their devices drawing them into private worlds. The men lay sideways on their flanks, bellies spilling onto their towels. The women were mostly in bikinis, their shoulder straps tied behind their backs, their breasts resting loosely on their stomachs.
The other side of the beach was another story: gym-toned women, many of them topless, wandering around the beach bars, while tattooed men in vests and shorts watched them hawk-like from the sidelines. In one of the bars, a DJ was playing a gentle, almost jazz-like set. Girls were bobbing to the music, their contoured stomachs lubed with cream. No one caught anyone’s eye and yet the atmosphere was charged. They all ignored the families in the distance, as if oblivious to where all of this was heading.
Bay rolled her towel out next to mine, removed her top immediately and started slathering sunscreen on her chest. I couldn’t see her eyes behind her glasses, all I could see were two reflections of myself. She pulled a book out of her bag and caught me glancing at what she was reading: Human Givens: A New Approach to Emotional Health and Clear Thinking. On the cover was a photo of the rainforest, dew dripping from a verdant frond.
‘You should read it,’ she told me. ‘It’s really changed the way I think. It’s all about basic needs, you know, the things we all need to be happy.’
‘Like?’ I asked her.
‘Well, it starts with absolute fundamentals – food, shelter, things like that. Not just bricks and mortar but like, emotionally, a home.’
‘What else?’
‘Oh, I mean, it just goes on.’ She sighed, flicking through the pages.
I tried to ignore the boys beside us who were staring at her tits.
‘There’s attention, for example – like being acknowledged by the world. Then there’s a sense of control over your life. After that comes love, intimacy, feeling like part of a community. There are tons of things.’ She propped herself up on one elbow and slid a thin cigarette out of her bag. I looked at her mirrored lenses and wondered what she thought of me. She obviously had money, and either hadn’t noticed or was relaxed about the fact that I didn’t. ‘Freedom’s a big one.’ She exhaled, an ‘O’ of smoke floating towards the sea. ‘Personal autonomy, that sort of thing.’
It struck me that these things were hard to come by – even taken in isolation, I couldn’t say I’d managed even one of them.
‘The point at which life is worth living is probably quite high,’ I said out loud.
She looked surprised but she didn’t contradict me. I didn’t smoke but I took a cigarette, although it wasn’t really a cigarette I wanted – it was more of whatever I’d had the other night.
